MARVEL FANFARE #15 (1984)

Now this is what Marvel Fanfare ought to have been about: Superstar creators and/or up-and-comers telling stories they wouldn’t be able to tell in “normal” serialized comics. Here, the great Barry Windsor-Smith does a simple story of Thing and Human Torch one-upping each other with a series of escalating pranks, starting with Johnny gluing straws to Ben’s face so he think’s he has a beard.

If there were a top 10 list of issues of Marvel Fanfare, this would surely be on it. It starts sinister

This book is forty years old, so I’m not going to worry about spoilers: Johnny says it’s all an April Fool’s gag, but then it turns out he miscounted the date and it’s not April yet. Nice punchline, with another great punchline that follows it.Also a nice touch: Cameos by Miss Piggy and Cerebus the Aardvark, in balloon form.

Barry Windsor Smith was just an amazing dude. I wish he had a larger body of work.

The back-up feature was decent. It featured Roger McKenzie writing Daredevil again–remember, he was the guy who introduced Frank Miller’s art to all of us in the pages of Daredevil.